Under The Paw: June 2008

Monday, 30 June 2008

Hard Cats - Most Menacing Kitten

In an effort to encourage young talent and seem prescient in acknowledging the hard-looking cats of the future, we at littlecatdiaries have decided to make an extra prize in the Toughest-Looking Cat Championship. The winner will receive a copy of Under The Paw and progress to the World Kitten Extreme Fighting Championship, to be held at Earl's Court in September (not really, you'll just get the book). It's between the following - from top: Spider, Binx, Freddie and Tilly.

Hard Cats: The Shortlist

Well, there have been tough-looking cats, there have been calmly sinister-looking cats, and there have been cats who look like they've entered entirely the wrong competition, but the standard of entries has been remarkably high, and in the end it's come down to the ten highly impressive bruisers below.

The official closing date for entries is Wednesday, so I'm keeping two more possible places free for any particularly brutish latecomers who happen to turn up. That said, they're going to have to be seriously hard to make it.

I'll be announcing the winner towards the end of the week.

Feel free to post comments in a shameless attempt to influence the outcome. I'm very suggestible (but not THAT suggestible - sorry Magina and her fanclub, you didn't quite make the cut).

From top: Nala, Ginger Tough, Boomer, Bowcat, Milo, Cappuccino, Salem, Zorro, Lou and Maurice. And two late additions: Sid Vicious and Tilly.

Sunday, 29 June 2008

Tiger vs Bear (but not The Bear, thankfully)

I've been watching the DVD of the excellent Tiger - Spy In The Jungle documentary recently, which not only has the bonus value of seriously freaking my cats out but also features what, to my knowledge, is the only footage of a tiger having a piss ever shown on the BBC. It sometimes seems a little pleased with its own technological prowess, but why not? By training elephants to carry special “trunkcams”, it’s managed to compile three years of the most astonishing up-close and personal footage of five tiger cubs in India’s Pench National Park. The result feels more like a secret diary than any nature programme I can remember.

Spy In The Jungle also features sloth bears. These are now right up there with capybaras and ostriches on my list of Animals I Must Own When I Get A Considerably Bigger, Hotter Garden: lovably ludicrous creatures that seem to have been not so much conceived as made from scratch by an overzealous hippie children’s artist circa 1973. They’ve got pretty nasty-looking claws and an obvious attitude problem, as is evinced when one of them has a stand-off with one of the four cubs. Nonetheless there’s no prizes for guessing who will end the encounter running off into the jungle like a girl.

Hard Cats II: Return of the Hard Cats - now available to view on Facebook!

click here

Cats are idiots

Freddie the cat is clearly fond of the elevated position and electric warmth that a high-voltage power line can offer, the dipshit.

Hard Cats *17: two latecomers...

Firstly: Betsy has sent us Moe, Larry and Curly - some street cats from Jaffa ("they have to be the hardest of the hard to survive out there...").

Finally, ladies and gentlemen, meet Vera; a cat so terrifying she is sealed in a box for our protection...

Hard Cats *16

From top: Portugese cat, from Janine. Rosie, from Helen. Strider, from Claire. The Late Sass, from Jessica. Tilly, from Gilly.

Hard Cats *15

From top: Marie, by Camille. Mrs Syd, from Lesley. Nala, from Emma. Ollie, from Sarah. Poppy, from Gilly.

Blackjack NEWSFLASH!!!

Sorry to interrupt the parade of Hard Cats, but regular visitors to the pages of the Little Cat Diaries will be relieved to hear that the elusive Blackjack, the last Olympic stray to outwit the heroic trapping efforts of Celia Hammond, is finally and safely in the care of C.H.A.T. Well done Celia!